


Singling

by KJGooding



Series: Post-Canon Trill Revival [8]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alien Culture, Exile, F/F, Family Feels, Gen, M/M, Reassociation, Trill Culture (Star Trek), Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:19:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22654624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KJGooding/pseuds/KJGooding
Summary: A new symbiont is born.  Ezri is presented with an opportunity many provisional captains only dream of: making first contact.  But first, she makes a bold choice to exonerate a pair of Trill criminals, exiled for Reassociating with one another a century ago.
Relationships: Ezri Dax/Lenara Kahn, Julian Bashir & Ezri Dax, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Series: Post-Canon Trill Revival [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1251704
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Singling

2383 

As the months wore on, Ezri began to understand why the Old Symbiosis Commission had no patience to let the symbionts reproduce naturally. There had not been a new symbiont spawned in decades, and those that had entered circulation most recently were the result of intentional, captive coupling. Dax and Kahn, however, felt a genuine draw to one another, so their former hosts gave them a larger enclosure with constant warm currents and plenty of privacy. 

Symbionts had a notoriously difficult time reproducing - their dichogamous cycles were often out of sync, and their pistils and stamens became less and less defined as they aged. Kahn and Dax were certainly not the oldest symbionts in existence, and would likely live another few centuries at least, but they still had difficulties. And then, there was a simple and almost impossible-to-deviate from obstacle at the very end: only one of the pupae would open and develop into a sentient symbiont, absorbing the other potential personalities and practical energy into itself. The process - and the final living product - were both referred to as ‘singling.’

Eventually, the pair was moved to the natural hot springs as a last resort. Ezri had no desire to deny them a right the two symbionts had wished for since their first interaction, and she hoped the community in the pool already would offer them the safety and comfort they needed. Rali had been absolutely thrilled to make the journey, and to help her mother unlock the top of the tank, letting Dax and Kahn swim out of it at their leisure. 

For a young child, she was exceptionally patient, and too awestruck to touch either of the symbionts. She merely watched and waited, and chittered at them under her breath, encouraging them in a voice only they could hear. At last they acquiesced and Rali was rewarded with a spectacular light display, as every inhabitant of the pool exchanged greetings at once. Lenara and Ezri crouched low, leaning in to watch over Rali’s shoulders. 

“Yes,” Rali said, nodding forward at the crowd of symbionts. 

“That’s what they needed, huh?” Ezri asked, charmed. “Good job, sweetheart. Thank you for helping.”

Lenara stood, then Ezri… but Rali remained where she was for another few minutes, taking in every pattern of lights and spots. 

“Yes,” she said again, eyes widening. “They’ll have the baby here.”

Ezri patted her arm and helped her to stand up, too. 

“We’ll come back and see in a month or so, sweetie. You like talking to them, don’t you?”

Rali nodded with unrestrained enthusiasm, and kept turning to look over her shoulder as Ezri led her by the hand up the stone steps, out of the subterranean cave, and all the way back home. The first hesitant frost of winter was rising up from rifts in the stones, but Rali was too preoccupied with the conversation to stop and explore. 

Time away from the symbionts gave Ezri a chance to clear her head - it seemed to have the opposite effect on Lenara - and they filled their time with reading, learning from the ancient tomes and catching up on dye prints. Dax had become especially talkative in the weeks leading up to singling, and Ezri had not yet had a chance to read through all of its thoughts. She had gleaned some from their telepathic interactions, but was obviously not perfect at separating out each line. But she was able to use her right hand, now, relying on the techniques she practiced with Julian and benefiting further from Dax’s hiatus. 

Julian had shared the prologue to his not-quite-formal-study with her, and she in turn shared the overview with Dax. It sat by as Julian called her to share his impressions, and one thought in particular stuck in their minds. 

“Not too long ago, I thought these people -  _ my _ people - had no sense of self, and it was  _ infuriating _ !” she said. 

“That’s true, in a way. Your people are  _ selfless _ ,” Julian said with a smile. “In every sense of the term, even if we extrapolate into symbiotic connotations; you don’t have a ‘self’ so to speak… you always have at least two. The two of you know that better than most; I think you always have.” 

Ezri looked at Dax - it was in its tank with Kahn at the time, its excited chirping constantly transforming the dye pad on the outside - and nodded at it gently. It was an old friend, one she had shared a trying time with, and they had both emerged victorious and whole. 

“I mean,” Julian went on, “even with no intention to Join, there you were seeking out a little community. You were taking a role in the pasts of your patients on that ship, you were helping them build their identities, secure a better trajectory for the future. And then when Dax came along, you took it in without hesitation. You saved its life, without expecting anything in return.”

“That’s right. I did,” Ezri said, feeling better about herself in that moment than she had in several months, at least. 

“And that’s not to say you don’t know  _ exactly _ who you are, Ezri Tigan,” he beamed. “It just means you have something in common with your fellow Trill after all: that beautiful sense of community… interconnectedness, now fully realized without the Commission interfering at every turn.” 

“Yeah,” Ezri agreed, “I have to hand it to the Federation for stepping in, even if it took them way longer than I wanted. Every limiting and damaging legislation has been lifted, making symbionts equal citizens in our society.”

“It was bold of you to posit they were actually being treated as  _ inferior _ ,” Julian said, looking undeniably proud of her. “I know the Symbiosis Commission would’ve insisted the opposite was the case.”

“The old one, maybe. But I insist on rights for everyone, my whole community.”

Dax glowed especially brightly at this, and communicated too much at once for Ezri to have any hope of understanding. 

But finally, with Dax away, she was able to read through the frantic transcript it made during this conversation. 

**Love** , it said. 

**Love and fear. Torias and Nilani. Wanted a child they never had. Wanted more time together. Never had. It was my fault.**

**Jadzia and Lenara. Could have been the same tragedy. But a different one occurred.**

**I have learned I have grown I have stabilized. I do not inspire fear in my partners.**

**Verring and Greda. Of Dei and of Lase. I seek them.**

**Kronos. Protects them.**

**Like Ezri protects me from what I might have become. I cannot harm Love and Fear any longer. A relief.**

Ezri glanced up from the screen, feeling touched but not altogether reassured about the way she was mentioned. She looked to Lenara, who was fidgeting on the rocking chair nearby, sipping her drink and looking wistfully at the now-empty symbiont tank. Kahn’s absence unsettled her, but she leaned heavily on her training and tried to remain professional, composed, and strong enough to overcome the change. She relied on Ezri for help, too, and the two of them had become even closer after their respective Disjoinings. 

“Lenara, dear,” Ezri began in a soft voice, until Lenara turned to look at her. “I’m reading some of Dax’s prints from the other day… I’m not sure who it’s referring to.”

“ _ Who _ ?” Lenara repeated, uncrossing her legs and making a shaky jolt forward so she could come to Ezri’s aid.

“Yeah. It mentions our names a few times, but there are some others I don’t recognize. I should remember them though, shouldn’t I? I mean, if Dax knows who they are…”

“It might’ve met them after you Disjoined,” Lenara said, because she - like Ezri - believed Julian’s artificial symbionts contained all the memories they needed, and had no negative draw on their minds. 

“After? I don’t-- yeah, I  _ guess _ it could’ve,” Ezri admitted, while she considered the humorous image of Dax, in its individual tank, meeting new people. 

“What are the names? We can figure this out.”

“There are four of them here,” Ezri gestured along the dye print, and Lenara came to sit beside her, reading over her shoulder, “Verring, Greda… Dei, and Lase.”

Lenara froze, with her fingers hovering just over Ezri’s on the screen.

“You’ve never heard of them?”

“No… but something tells me I should have…?” Ezri said, furrowing her brows. 

“I know you grew up in a colony,” Lenara went on, trying to settle her voice into a more teasing tone, “but they basically set the precedent for Reassociation.”

“Really?”

“There were others before them, but… those names have been something out of a horror story to me, my whole life. They were the first to be exiled, as far as I know. Prior to 2299, the penalty was death.”

“Curzon was Joined then; he must’ve heard about it,” Ezri said. “But I guess he was off-world. That’s not long ago at all.”

“No, it isn’t. Probably too recent to be in any of these records,” Lenara said, gesturing to the tomes she and Ezri kept in the common room to read.

“What happened? Why would they change the punishment?”

Lenara brought both of her hands forward again, setting aside the print Ezri was reading from, and tucking her hands inside of Ezri’s, balling them up to keep herself from trembling.

“You have to understand, this  _ terrified  _ me. Maybe Jadzia didn’t know, either. Or Dax didn’t let her think about it, when I saw her for the first time again on the station. They had a child…”

“Torias and Nilani? No, they didn’t. Unless she didn’t tell--”

“No, they didn’t, she wouldn’t, I mean I would’ve told Jadzia at least, but… Verring Dei and his first spouse, Merla Lase. They had a child, and Merla died shortly after delivery. I don’t know, it had some terrible effect on the baby. There were complications… they took Merla from the delivery room and-- Greda was their midwife, you see. And she must’ve felt awful, like she was the one responsible for Merla’s decline. She volunteered to take the symbiont - the Commission wasn’t about to leave it in Merla while she was dying… so they performed the Joining, and whether it was Greda’s idea or Lase’s, she took that child from the nursery, where it had been all alone and  _ screaming _ , and she nurtured it as if it were her own.”

“And… what about Verring, the father?” Ezri asked, in a quiet voice. 

“He searched for the child almost four years. Greda had taken it off planet somewhere, or so the story goes. The trauma that child felt after being separated from its mother was apparently reversed, as Greda Lase nurtured it. And when Verring found the two of them, I assume he was angry at first, but ultimately he was grateful, and he remarried the Lase symbiont, in Greda’s body, several years later.”

“And then they were exiled?”

“As far as I know, they weren’t granted re-entry to the Trill system, and that was an end of it. The Commission probably changed the law quietly. I think they took the child back, but the two parents couldn’t come to the homeworld ever again.”

“I can see why that would terrify you,” Ezri said sympathetically. “It was still fresh in your mind - and the Commission’s, too - when you saw Jadzia. And you thought about the family Torias and Nilani wanted, but never got the chance to have.”

“Yes…” Lenara’s voice was weak. 

Ezri clenched Lenara’s hands tightly, and lifted her chin enough to meet Lenara’s gaze directly. 

“I think Dax saw them on Kronos,” Ezri said. She rolled her eyes back as she thought, then snapped them forward again when she had the answer. “I… I have to exonerate them. That must be what Dax was trying to tell me. It saw them on Kronos, and now  _ I _ have to bring them home.”

“Because Reassociation is legal, again,” Lenara brought herself to smile, but still lacked full conviction. 

“As it should be! If Lase was a good parent to that child, it shouldn’t matter what body it’s in. I mean, whenever I get messages from Tobin’s great-grand-children - even though they’re older than me - I  _ love  _ telling them how proud he’d be of them. I’d do that for any  _ taya _ , and so would Dax, by itself. We aren’t here to deny the connections that are important to people, or even question what those connections are.”

“That’s quite a change from ‘why can’t you think for yourself?’” Lenara observed, smiling more fully now. 

“That was me speaking for  _ everyone else _ ,” Ezri replied, “and that was equally unfair of me to assume.”

“I see.”

Ezri took another quick glance at the dye-print, tilting her head to match the angle it was resting at, on the side table. 

“You got all that from  _ there _ ?” Lenara asked. “Dax must be quite the author.”

“Well, not all of it. It didn’t  _ order  _ me to go find them, or anything. But I  _ want  _ to, if they’re still out there. They need to know the law is changed. And I would just love to sit down and have a conversation with them, wouldn’t you?”

“With the characters from my nightmares? My biggest inspirations? Yes, I suppose I would.”

***

As he always did, Julian came to their aid. Lenara did not wish to leave the symbionts unsupervised, nor did she want to take sole responsibility for Rali while Ezri was making a diplomatic trip to Kronos, so she reached out to him on the channel Ezri kept open. 

Elim accompanied him, thrilled to play the role - more or less - of the ornamental spouse on Julian’s arm. Of course, Elim made a point never to appear fully out of his element, but he was here purely for leisure - because he wanted to spend time with Julian. He felt no resentment toward Ezri for retaining any of Julian’s affection - she was not even on the planet, anyway - but instead found himself eagerly accepting this familial structure, richer and more rewarding than he had ever known on Cardassia. The fact was, Julian was called upon to look after his child, and to give professional advice to an old friend, and Elim would follow him anywhere to offer his support. 

The old friend just happened to be Dax, and the professional advice came in the form of fertility supplement gel. 

He and Elim helped to bundle each other up in scarves and parkas before making the journey out to the caves. Rali was required to wear a jacket, too, but she preferred a thinner one. The climate did not bother her as much as the scratchy sleeves did, and as long as Julian was satisfied she could maintain her body temperature, he would not push the subject. 

“I never would have imagined myself enjoying my retirement on a planet  _ colder  _ than the station,” Elim said, voice muffled by his scarf. 

Julian offered out his arm, allowing Elim to loop his hand around it, burrowing in to share the warmth from Julian’s body and coat. 

“The station was 22 degrees Celsius  _ constantly _ . Aside from the occasional malfunction here and there,” Julian said. “That’s an acceptable temperature to the vast majority of  _ Federation  _ races.”

“Well, if that’s how they make their admission decisions, I am happy to say Cardassia will remain outside of their purview until our next ice age, in whatever millennia that might come. But  _ mercies _ , I’m freezing.”

Julian shrugged and mulled the matter over.

“Two degrees  _ is  _ a bit uncomfortable, I have to agree,” he said.

“Thank you,” Elim was ready to grin, but his face changed immediately into a gasp, as Rali went tearing past them in her much thinner jacket. She was shrieking with laughter and having altogether too much fun for the circumstances, Elim thought. 

“I told her she could feed the symbionts,” Julian explained. Then he called out to her, “Rali, slow down. Be  _ careful _ . There’s  _ ice _ , sweetheart!”

She slowed and then stopped, and turned to look at him until he had caught up to her. Elim was there as well, trudging along beside Julian, through the uneven sheets of ice in question. 

Wintertime on Trill was markedly different from the  _ Devetek  _ period on Cardassia. First and foremost, winter was almost a constant state of being on Trill, but when the time periods occurred simultaneously, Julian and Elim could not help but make comparisons. Even when the ice would retreat into the permafrost, the air would remain bone chilling to anyone unprepared for it. Elim thought the ice offered a fantastic change of scenery, and Julian promised him it offered insulation too. Then, some of the thinnest reeds Elim had ever seen clawed their way up from the frost, their stalks blackened and bitten by crystals of ice. 

When he stooped to study one more closely - with Rali coming to stand beside him, always intrigued by Elim’s floral projects as any untrained observer might be - he found a frail flowerbud wrapped up within the depths of the stalk, like a tongue shriveled away into the back of a frostbitten throat. 

“Hmm,” he said, observing the bud without touching it, “do you happen to know what they call these, dear?”

Julian did not know the answer, nor did Rali. Elim did not know either, and had asked the question in genuine interest rather than for show. 

“I’ll have to ask Ms. Otner, when we return to her residence for the evening.”

“Are you going to pick it?” Julian asked, charmed. 

“No, dear. Not until I know more about it. Although I’d  _ like  _ to…”

“Well, I can’t imagine letting any partner of mine spend his retirement without having  _ everything  _ he wants, especially when it’s such a  _ simple  _ request…”

Julian brought a Bajoran scanning device up from its notch in his belt, but Elim gently caught his wrist before he could lean over the plant. 

“That’s quite alright, dear. I’d prefer to live in the mystery for a few more hours, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Julian said, putting the scanner back where it belonged. Oh, he was sure Elim had something more elaborate planned, but he would allow the indulgence. It was simple enough to do.

But then he got the feeling Elim was reading his face, practicing the skill he had perfected years ago as an agent of the Order. 

“If you  _ must  _ know,” Elim explained, “I believe it would be a lifesaving graft option for some of the  _ freesia  _ I’ve been trying to revive, since the fire. As a surgeon, you should appreciate that.”

“Of course. So… that worm Kelas and Rali found wasn’t helping the soil, it seems…?”

“Unfortunately not. It seems,” Elim echoed, in Standard to tease Julian, “I’ve given the poor fellow more work than he can handle.”

“But  _ you _ could handle it, given the chance to study one of these plants more closely.”

“I  _ have _ been a gardener, dear. And a florist. The diameter of this  _ fine _ specimen’s stem is almost identical to that of my freesia, and it is  _ obviously _ well-adjusted to a life of cold and darkness, whereas my Cardassian  _ freesia  _ are not.”

“Yes, they seem to have a lot in common with their keeper.”

Elim tucked his mouth down further into his scarf, to better disguise his shivering. 

“Yes, they do,” he said. “Although I like to think I am faring at least  _ slightly  _ better here than they would, thank you.”

“Oh, you’re doing  _ splendidly _ ,” Julian agreed, nudging Elim’s middle. 

Elim’s spirit brightened even further when they came to the mouth of the cave. Rali arrived there first, but stopped to wait for the others to catch up. Julian insisted on holding her hand as they crept down the stone steps together; Rali could be a bit clumsy at times, and the uneven terrain coupled with ice was no help to her. 

It was noticeably warmer inside the cave, with the temperature preserved by humidity as they reached the shore of one of the pools. Elim considered taking off his jacket so he could bask in it; air so rich was a rarity on Cardassia. The more he thought about it, the more it reminded him of the saunas he enjoyed in his young adulthood, and he sat down quite happily on a stone while Julian led Rali deeper inside.

When Unjoined, symbionts did not have the digestive system of a host to rely on for sustenance. The pools provided an opportunity for artificial photosynthesis, allowing the symbionts to feed off of refractions of each other’s glowing patterns, taking turns and passing the energy around. They also nibbled at the soft leaves of aquatic plants and the ferns of moss which grew over them, when the water was still. Then, of course Julian had put together a list of suitable supplements they would enjoy in an easily digestible gel form, and he shared a basic overview of these with Rali. 

“Point out Dax and Kahn for me,” he said, stooping beside the correct pool with her, and glancing over her shoulder, “and we’ll be sure to give them some of  _ this _ .”

He twisted the lid off a jar, filled with supplemental gel he designed to optimize their singling process. After Rali had found the two symbionts with ease, Julian helped her to scoop up some of the mixture into her hand. Half would go to Dax, and the other half would go to Kahn. Either of them could be playing either of the roles in the process, but both could benefit from additional nutrients. 

Rali held her hand forward with a caution she learned from her mother; Ezri kept a respectful distance from the symbionts. Julian, meanwhile, took his half of the gel and dipped his hand right into the water. Luckily, Dax never had much regard for custom anyway, and it swam up from the cluster of symbionts, excited to make contact with its old friend and partner. Kahn preferred Rali’s slower motions, and floated up gradually to feed from her hand. 

She did not say anything, but she stared down and smiled. When she caught Julian observing her - her face in particular - she rushed to cover it with her other hand.

“That’s alright,” he said. “This is  _ nice _ . It’s good for us to feed the parents, so the baby will be healthy.”

“When will it be here,” Rali whispered, from under her hand. She did nothing to her inflection to indicate a question, but Julian did not mind. 

Julian took a quick peek at his scanner, as it was programmed to display readings even when inactive in its holster. He watched the series of lights flick on and off in a particular order, as it took in the vitals of all the symbionts, then isolated the two he was most interested in…

“No sign of it yet. We’ll come back every week, though, until we see something. Then we’ll be sure to let Mum know, if she isn’t back from Kronos…”

Dax glowed and moved with vigor as Julian said this, and Julian wondered what it might be thinking about, how much it was aware of even when Ezri was far away.

***

It was Dax, Son of Kang, who made special last-minute modifications to his itinerary to meet Ezri on the Klingon homeworld. He was born during Curzon’s time - christened as Curzon’s godson, as well as the concept translated - and he was by now a delegate of some distinction. In all his years, he had never met Jadzia, but he heard through multiple channels of her death and the cries which sent her onward to Sto’Vo’Kor. He greeted Ezri with a bow, an offer to share his house, and a promise to track down the other Spotted People as efficiently as he could. 

“I heard the other Dax had been here,” he said, handling the concept of separate entities somewhat clumsily in his native language. “But I did not have the chance to interact with him.”

“That’s okay,” Ezri assured. “I bet…  _ he _ will be back.”

“He did much for my family. I would feel joy at the chance to repay the debt.”

Ezri had never indulged fully in Curzon or Jadzia’s interests in Klingon culture, but she knew better than to insult any expression of emotion beyond  _ honor _ , however hesitant.

“I’ll pass that on to him,” Ezri said. She did not know if they were both talking about Dax or about Curzon or alternating between the two, but she would convey the message either way. 

She went to bed that night in an ornately decorated room, that of a Klingon dignitary, and while it was far from comfortable, she felt safe and at least somewhat at home. How strange, she thought, that she could access that little feeling almost wherever she went. Something would arise and appeal to familiarity, whether hers or the mechanical symbiont’s or any of the hosts’ memories it carried, and she would relax even in places she had never heard of before.

It took them only a few days of open communiques to find the fugitive couple. They were wary to meet with Ezri at first, but she thoroughly clarified her involvement with the Trill government was entered with the sole intention of rebuilding it from the ground up. 

“I’m here  _ only  _ to exonerate you,” she insisted in her communique. “Reassociation is no longer a crime, and if you want to come  _ home  _ to spend the rest of your lives together, I would love to facilitate that.”

They agreed to a meeting, and Ezri realized immediately that she was not the only one capable of making a home in any place she spent her time. Perhaps the skill had taken her longer to master, but it seemed as natural to other Trill as the sense of community and selfless duty which bound them all together. 

Verring and Greda were both well past 100 years old, and in all that time they had accumulated a wealth of possessions. With a cane lodged firmly in his hand, Verring took Ezri on a tour of their  _ home _ , as it existed there in the tumultuous mountains of Kronos, and he pointed out several key items in their collection. He had brought along several reminders of Lase’s previous host - his previous wife, the biological mother of his child - and he showed these to Ezri with quiet longing in his voice. He also incorporated items he brought from Trill, and items Greda Lase had accumulated in her planet-hopping when she was on the run with the abducted child. Ezri looked at eyeglasses, ink-laden scrolls, canvas satchels, embroidered ornaments, glass beads, weapons carved of bone… she looked at almost the entire quadrant, laid out in precious treasures. It reminded her of the research she had originally conducted with Dax, when she tried to seek closure with its past families with no additional layers of communication yet in mind. She told her guides this, emphatically.

“I did this, too,” she said, as Verring brought her into the front room of the house. “I found everything I could that used to belong to  _ taya _ , and I put it all together like it was a museum, just for me…”

The dining table was clearly of Klingon construction - hearty wood inlaid with metal, emblems and family crests engraved into each corner, where the seats were carefully arranged. There were four chairs, marked for Verring, Greda, ‘Noble Guests,’ and…

“Was  _ Tive  _ your child?” Ezri asked, gently touching the inscription written alongside the fourth seat. It was written in Trill, but the connection would have been obvious to her in any language. 

“Both of ours, yes,” Greda spoke up from her own seat at the table. “Come, sit in it. It’s been empty far too long.”

Ezri accepted the invitation, trying to remain composed and respectful in every gesture, from folding her hands to rest over the name to setting her feet flat on the floor so she would not tap them or make any undue noise. 

“Thank you,” she said. “I… can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

“Oh, your visit could mean a great deal to us, too,” Verring said. 

The creaking of his bones was complemented by the shifting of his wooden chair, as he pulled it out along the tile and then scooted inward again. His hair was white and thinning - not unlike Curzon’s, Ezri thought - and Greda’s was wrapped up entirely in a thick black scarf, leaving it impossible for Ezri to guess at its length or color underneath. 

“I did not catch your full name, dear,” Greda said, touching Ezri’s hand. 

Greda’s face was softened by her age; rather than pulled taut by wrinkles, her cheeks had a healthy, rosy flush to them, and the hook in her nose now served to hold up her spectacles, which would have otherwise slid down. 

“Oh, my surname’s Tigan. Ezri Tigan.”

“Is that a new symbiont?” Verring asked.

“We’ve missed a few births, I would think,” Greda added, in perfect time with her husband.

“No, I’m… the term now is ‘Disjoined.’ I was formerly Joined to the Dax symbiont, but we went our separate ways.”

“From how you’re speaking,” Verring said, eyeing her suspiciously, “it doesn’t seem the act  _ killed  _ it?”

“I’d always liked Dax,” Greda added, perfectly filling the pause again. They had over a century of practicing, after all.

“No, no, not at all. I consider it like a close friend of mine, and it helped me raise a child of my own. I thought it, um… it sounded like it spoke to you while it was here, but I guess that wasn’t the case…?”

“I’m afraid news does not travel out this far, often,” Verring said. “When we settled here, we were not interested in hearing anything from Trill.” 

“That’s why we built our hut here. Back when it was a hut, anyway. We stretched it inward a few hundred meters, when we made a house of it. Any news was bad news, until now.”

“That’s right…” Ezri grinned. “Disjoining with Dax made me realize how desperately we needed to take a look at our Symbiosis program. We were ignoring needs from  _ both  _ parties, and I couldn’t let that happen. I mean… I wasn’t trained to Join in the first place - I just took Dax in an emergency - and I think that perspective is just what we needed, if that’s… not too pompous for me to say.”

“It isn’t pompous, so long as it’s worked,” Verring observed. “Would you care for something to eat? We like to have our lunch quite late, it’s no trouble.”

“Oh… sure, thank you. I’m not the biggest fan of Klingon food, it’s-- never mind, whatever you’re serving is perfect. I have  _ so much  _ I want to talk to you about.”

“Our crimes against the Commission,” Verring said, with a friendly chuckle. 

“We’d like to hear about yours, too,” Greda said.

“Of course!” Ezri said. “And I have to admit… I didn’t grow up on Trill; my partner had to tell me your story. But I’d love to hear it in your own words. Why did you do it?”

“For my baby,” Greda said. “He’d be in his nineties now, but he was my baby then. I took my symbiont on in an emergency situation as well, Miss Tigan, and all I could hear - even when I was knocked out on that operating table - was that baby screaming. I took his mother away and I had to give back what I could. I delivered him into the world, how could I take it away from him?” 

“I understand that very well,” Ezri spoke quietly, professionally. “I’m a counselor, so I always try to relate with what my patients are saying… and I wouldn’t tell them about my own life, but since you aren’t my patients, I… I love my daughter more than anything, but I honestly couldn’t tell you if it was  _ my _ idea to get pregnant or if it was my symbiont’s, or if it was both of us deciding together. The host right before me had  _ just _ gotten pregnant before the accident—” 

“It’s a difficult process for all of us; people and symbionts alike. I’m sure the technology must be better now than it was when I worked in the field, but still. I could not have imagined doing it myself. You emerged victorious from what is almost an impossible trial. Many of us cannot do that.”

“Thank you. And it… I guess it could’ve been a lot worse, really. My husband was a doctor; he made sure everything went just about as perfectly as it could…”

“Something happened to him…?” Greda led gently, thoughtfully. 

“No, he’s fine. He’s like a close friend now, too. We just weren’t happy, being together romantically.”

“Hmm,” Verring cleared his throat. “We know that feeling, also, Miss Tigan.”

“You can call me Ezri,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

“ _ Ezri _ ,” he began again. “Our marriage has been more an alliance than a romance. We were all each other had, for many years.”

“How did you feel when you first found each other again?” Ezri asked. “From what I’ve heard, you were upset...?”

“Furious,” said Verring, while reaching his hand across the table to touch Greda’s forearm. “I had tried for several years to track her, she kept moving on to different planets, each further and further off from the homeworld. I caught up with her here, in fact… the Klingons had just entered into an arranged Peace treaty with the Federation, only a few years before. It was a harsh, unforgiving place to live if one was not Klingon. I looked at her - she was clutching Tive to her chest, not letting him see me - and I was  _ enraged _ .”

“And then I tried to explain,” Greda began, in perfect time. “I said to him, ‘this is the child I gave birth to, the child I delivered into my arms. I  _ will not  _ let him be taken from me a second time.’”

“And I could see that,” Verring said. “I could  _ see  _ some part of my wife in that face, I knew it was the same symbiont I was talking to, somehow. She had not harmed Tive, over those four years. He was happy and healthy, and did not cry out as if he was being held by a stranger.”

“Well, we knew the punishment for Reassociating with past spouses was death. But we had no intention to marry at that time, merely to raise Tive. So we decided we would go home, and make our case to them. If they would insist on killing these bodies,” Greda gestured to include herself and Verring merely as vessels,  _ hosts _ , “we would turn and flee. I knew my way around the quadrant; it did not scare me to be on the run.”

“So they heard your case,” Ezri followed along, with verbal notes, “and they changed the punishment to exile?”

“Yes. Because they couldn’t  _ win  _ with us. They had made the choice to preserve the Lase symbiont by giving it to me, but they were not prepared to accept responsibility for any of its actions afterward. It had been  _ deviant _ , it had committed one of their highest crimes.”

“As a response to trauma,” Ezri said gently. “Dax was that way, too. You  _ cannot  _ expect a sentient being to experience death and then wake up again like nothing happened. As much as they want to preserve the symbionts, I had the hardest time getting anyone on the Commission to  _ listen  _ for their individual voices.”

“I can imagine!” said Greda. “So they said ‘fine, you aren’t welcome here’ as if that had been their plan all along, and they watched us go. They made us into fables, instead of martyrs.”

“I’ve had poachers come after Dax,” Ezri offered her perspective. “They didn’t care whether it was deviant or not - in fact I think that made it even  _ more  _ appealing to failed Initiates. And they tried to take it out of me before it was ready. Did you experience anything like that?”

Verring shrugged his shoulders, and was met with Greda reaching across the table to readjust his shawl for him. It sagged low in the center, collar weighed down by a decorative metal emblem, but otherwise it looked comfortable and warm. Kronos was much more temperate than the Trill homeworld was, and they had apparently adjusted to the warmer climate in the century they had spent there. 

“I’m sure,” he said. “But our favorite thing about the Klingons… they let us live in peace, out of the way, and they did not take kindly to any unwelcome guests with weapons. I imagine if we had showed up at the ports as fugitives, they would have turned us away. But we came with a story - we were refugees seeking  _ refuge _ , Federation members from the same planet as your legendary Curzon Dax… and it seems they kept any potential poachers at bay, without us even knowing. Can you picture it? Transporting down from an uninvited ship with a handful of surgical tools, sharp enough to be considered weapons? Oh, I suppose surgeries nowadays don’t require a blade at all, but back then…”

He trailed off and apologized for the tangent, but Ezri assured him she did not mind. 

“No, they don’t rely just on scalpels anymore, you’re right,” she said. “Separations take upwards of twelve hours, but the incision isn’t painful - at least in my experience - and you’re back on your feet in a day or two.”

“Goodness,” Greda sighed, as if the fact both amazed and exhausted her. 

“I wouldn’t think either of you would want to pursue it -  _ separating _ , I mean - but the option is there…”

“No, I don’t think so,” Verring said, touching Greda’s arm again to indicate he spoke for both of them.

“I had a difficult time of it at first, of telling whose thoughts I was experiencing at any given time,” Greda went on, “but I’ve come to like it, now. It’s comfortable. I’ve never been alone, even when I  _ was  _ a fugitive.”

Ezri nodded, and felt comfortable enough herself to reach out for Greda’s hand, too. 

“But if you want to come  _ home _ … I know you’ve made a home, here, but if you want to come back to Trill… I think there are a  _ lot  _ of people there who would  _ love _ to know that your fable has a happy ending.”

***

Elim and Julian spent six nights on the proverbial couch in Ezri and Lenara’s home. Really, it was a pair of oversized lounge chairs, which the couple used for much of their reading and casual meals throughout the day, then transformed at night with extra blankets to accommodate their guests. It was a small house - two enclosed circular rooms and a common area and kitchen nestled between them, with many of the appliances folding up into the walls and ceiling when not in use. Lenara had lived there alone, and often spent time away conducting her research, so it did not need to be any larger. One of the bedrooms was hers and then  _ hers and Ezri’s _ , and the other pod was modified to fit both her data collection array and a bed for Rali. 

On the first night, as promised, Elim asked Lenara for information on the flowering reed he saw outside the cave. She gave what information she could, as botany was not her field of specialty. But she had lived alongside the plants her whole life, and could at least divulge their name and seasonality. 

“ _ Teekza _ ,” she said. “If you’re here any longer, you might see them start to bloom.”

“I expect we’ll be gone by then. Would there be any harm done if I took one prior to that?”

“I don’t think so. Not all of them bloom anyway, if the thorns get too big. Some of them just  _ spider _ .”

Julian and Elim received their own curious translations from the communication badges they wore, and looked at one another. 

“Spider?” Elim repeated.

“The buds don’t turn into anything,” Lenara tried to explain, “but they sort of… drip out. They decay and get somewhat tacky, and they spread across the ground like a web.”

“Hmm,” said Elim. “Well, I will regret missing the chance to observe  _ that _ . I’d merely like to use one to aid some of my  _ freesia  _ at home in regrowing, nothing more.”

“Sure,” Lenara said, still learning how to best handle Elim’s stories. “I don’t see any harm. Go ahead.”

By the fifth night, Elim selected the healthiest looking  _ Teekza  _ specimen he found on their daily walk to the caves. He uprooted it carefully and borrowed a microstasis box from Julian to preserve its health until he could pot it properly at home. He tucked it away in an inner coat of his parka, and trudged along behind Rali and Julian until they reached their destination, the same pool again, where Dax and Kahn resided. Rali patiently let Julian fill her hand with the nutrition gel, and then she lowered it into the water and watched the symbionts feed. Elim imagined - from his pleasant spot a warm stone - that the sensation felt quite nice. Rali laughed very quietly, under her breath and under her hand, as the two symbionts came to nibble out the gel from between her submerged fingers. Elim never managed a good look at their mouths, but he knew they had no eyes, semi-translucent spots they could manipulate into expressive patterns, and a collection of nerves and feelers of various lengths and thicknesses and roles. But he was content to sit on his rock, out of the way of Julian and the other half of his family, doing their own work and having their own fun. 

But then, from Julian - professional emergency physician and respected diplomatic officer - he heard a shriek of surprise. He stood and went over to investigate the matter and quickly deduced there was no danger, and despite Julian’s qualifications he was still very much a young man at heart.

“Can you see it, Elim?” he asked sweetly, gesturing into a whole tangle of symbionts under the surface of the murky water. “I know your scotopic vision is even better than mine…”

Rali was covering her face with both hands, now, leaving a slimy trail along her cheek from where the symbionts had touched. Elim knelt a few paces behind her, leaned over her shoulder, and looked. 

From Julian’s excitement, Elim expected a larger spectacle, but he understood the significance behind what he saw, no matter how small.

Following Julian’s hand, Elim could make out a cluster of tiny eggs, seemingly malleable in shape and form, glowing faintly and trying unsuccessfully to float to the surface, held down between Dax and Kahn. 

“I see it,” Elim said. “Now, I take it only one of those will hatch and develop into a symbiont?”

Rali shushed him but then answered with a quiet ‘yes, the baby.’ Julian touched her shoulder in an undecided gesture - whether he wanted her to apologize for this behavior or merely to stand up with him… perhaps a bit of both, Elim thought. 

“Taya Elim  _ is  _ speaking quietly,” Julian said, nodding toward the pool. “It might not feel like he is, because you’re hearing from  _ all  _ these symbionts… but he is. And you’re right, it’s good to be quiet. In fact, we should give them some space…”

He stood and hoisted Rali up to follow him. Since she did not come along willingly, he lifted her onto his shoulders and then took extra care in climbing the stone steps, with Elim close at his side. For as long as she was able, Rali turned to glance over her shoulder at the pool, at the symphony of undetectable sounds she must have heard resonating from within it. There  _ was _ sound - high-pitched humming and chirping in an approximation of the native Trill language - but there were extrasensory layers too, which she was particularly susceptible to, due to the nature of her tri-parentage and birth. She could practically  _ hear  _ the spots as they blazed with emotion-driven light, and she could picture the patterns in her memory long after the lights faded and the symbionts went to sleep for the night. She could feel the transference of experience from Dax, and she could list some of its strongest memories without either of her parents telling her about them. She knew all of its hosts in order, and she could guess which of the eggs in that cluster would complete the singling, or at least the one Dax favored for completing the task.

Julian finally pulled her gaze away with a simple question. 

“Do you want to tell Taya Lenara?” he asked. 

Rali beamed, and that was enough confirmation for him. 

When he set her down again, outside the front door, she rushed in to find Lenara and share the latest development in the symbionts’ story. Julian, meanwhile, sighed and slid out of his jacket before helping Elim out of his, too. Then he went and sat down in his designated lounge chair, holding a padd in his hand and debating whether or not to call Ezri. 

“I don’t want her to feel like she has to cut her trip short,” he said. “It could turn out to be nothing. All of them could Decay, it isn’t unheard of, especially with older parents…”

“Then don’t call,” Elim said. 

Julian could overhear Lenara and Rali in the other room, chatting about what a wonderful parent Kahn would be.

“You’ve gotten  _ their _ hopes up already,” Elim said, tipping his head toward the room, even though he could not hear the discussion as clearly. 

“Well… Rali noticed it before I did. She pointed it out to  _ me _ , probably the exact  _ millisecond  _ the eggs emerged. I can’t let anything happen to them, but it’s… beyond me, isn’t it?”

“As I may have said before, I have full confidence in your medical abilities, no matter how overbearing I might find your methods.”

Julian sighed again, but ultimately thanked Elim for his kind observation, and then turned to face the replicator straight on. 

“It’s nice to have access to a regularly-Federation-maintained replicator again, though, I can tell you  _ that _ ,” Julian said amiably. “One grapefruit, please, segmented. And Vulcan green tea with honeycomb and spirulina powder on the side, and two bowls of boiled  _ teredi  _ rice in skim milk with sultanas on the side.”

“That sounds like breakfast,” Elim observed, watching the replicator fill the order. 

Julian offered one of the bowls of rice to Elim, with a tired smile on his face, and his hand as steady as ever. 

“Sure. I couldn’t tell you what time it is here or at home or on Kronos, so I might as well start with breakfast.”

“I think that’s a lie,” Elim smirked, “and you could tell me the  _ exact  _ figure on any of those locations, and a dozen others.”

“Fine, I could. But my  _ body  _ couldn’t tell you, because my body wants a good breakfast, and it doesn’t care  _ what  _ time it is.”

Julian returned the smile, and Elim felt comfortable enough to take a bite of the steamed rice. When Julian ordered it - from his own typical but bizarre interplanetary menu - he favored a Bajoran grain and topped it with nutmeg. Elim had to admit he found it enjoyable, too. 

They finished their meal on their lounge chairs, blankets ruffled around them, listening to the conversation in the other room as it gradually became one-sided. Then, when it was Lenara carrying both roles of the interaction - patiently asking Rali for her feelings at fair intervals - Julian could hear the curved door swishing open, and the two of them emerged from the bedroom with timid grins on their faces. Rali went to sit beside Elim, whose tray was still decorated with an attractive array of dishes and sparkling clean utensils, and whose little blanket nest was a good deal neater than Julian’s.

“Doctor…” Lenara began in a quiet voice, placing her hand on his shoulder for a brief moment to get his attention. “If it’s no trouble… I’m sure you heard us talking about Kahn and how well-suited it would be to parenting, Rali even assures me it’s  _ sweet _ … I don’t mean to get ahead of myself - I find myself missing it, sometimes, especially with Ezri away… but I think I’d like to experience that again, myself. It would be a big favor to both of us, if you could, um… help with that.”

Julian could not recall Lenara being so prone to rambling, even when they first met. Of course, she had talked away the hours with Jadzia, then, while he chaperoned them, but her thoughts had never been quite so aimless. One could even argue that her long conversation with Jadzia had  _ two  _ perfectly executed aims: sharing a story, and endearing herself to a lover.

He tipped his head quizzically to one side, and spoke with his mouth still occupied by a spoonful of rice. 

“... _ pregnancy _ ?” he asked. 

“Oh no, no. Joining. I’d like to Rejoin, with Kahn.”

“Oh! Of course. I don’t see why not. I’d be happy to help with  _ that _ . I can refer you to several Trill physicians, as well, in case I’m not here at the time you’re ready… I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

Rali nodded her approval from the other seat, where Elim had given her the dish of sultanas to keep her occupied. She enjoyed playing with all manner of small and vaguely squishy things, and would either seek out patterns to read or arrange them herself. Since the raisins were replicated and never subjected to a natural drying process, they had no creases for her to find shapes in, but she still enjoyed pressing them together in her fist, then removing the whole collection and picking them apart again to eat one at a time. 

“I like that,” she said, more in reference to Lenara’s Joining than her snack. “One.”

“One,” said Julian. “Exactly.”

***

Julian put his call through to Ezri the next day, after having another breakfast at a more appropriate hour. He tried to temper his own enthusiasm with repeated reminders the singling process might not amount to anything, but Ezri overran these in her reply. 

When she received the message, she was already en route to the Trill homeworld again, with her legendary passengers in tow. All three of them crowded around the viewscreen, delighting in Dax and Kahn’s bravery and resilience, with the occasional remark from Verring about how incredible the new video conferencing technology was. 

“Is that your first husband?” Greda asked, leaning in to peer over Verring’s hunched shoulder.

Julian was not sure whether to wave or to gesture questioningly at himself, and was grateful Ezri spoke up before the slight recording lag caught up to him again. 

“Yeah. That’s Doctor Bashir.”

“Julian, please,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“And he’s… Cardassian?” Greda said. “That can’t be right.”

“Human, actually,” Julian replied. “I just  _ live  _ on Cardassia. I’m, er… although I’m on Trill, at the moment. Looking forward to meeting you.”

“Likewise,” said Verring. He turned aside to Ezri, unaware a whisper would still be picked up by the microphone: “He seems nice.”

“He’s great,” Ezri said, smiling back to the screen. “They’ve been looking through our initial research proposal on Reassociative Trauma. I wanted to offer them some ‘light reading’ for the trip.”

“Oh, yes,” Verring agreed. “Concise and - as Greda assures me - realistic on all counts. This is Greda, my second wife, you see… and then Lase, there, is my first.”

He chuckled to himself as he indicated the symbiont, alone, and Julian nodded in confirmation.

“We know exactly what you mean,” he said. 

“ _ We _ ’ll see you tonight,” Ezri said, referring to Dax in the same sweeping tone.

Then, with the transmission concluded, they set to making their individual preparations for the occasion. 

Knowing her home was too small for any more long-term guests, Ezri pulled the strings of some Starfleet connections to arrange housing for Verring and Greda. There was a guesthouse under construction, as a component of the new Symbiosis Initiate program, and she was able to ensure at least one of the dormitories would be fully outfitted, functional, and safe by that evening. Being a captain had its perks, she had to admit, as an engineering team was dispatched from a nearby starbase to get the job done in time. 

Elim prodded at the  _ Teekza  _ specimen he had collected, making private calculations and almost imperceptible modifications to its root system. From deep within the frostbitten throat of a stem, he coaxed out the blossom, rich and red and deceptively soft to the touch. His fingers came away with tiny burrs lodged beneath his claws, and he could not help but smile as Julian fussed over him and yanked these out with tweezers. What a magnificent plant, he thought. Whether it had decayed and made a web across the dirt, or blossomed and exposed its thorns to anyone curious enough to touch them, he adored it. But a defensive bloom like this simply would not do for the final plan he had in mind; he would need only the stem, and something softer to display on top...

After Julian finished with his patient, dropping the thorns into a disposable tray and the tweezers into a basin to be sanitized, he helped Rali with a request she made. She watched the procedure and helped apply sticky bandages to Elim’s fingertips, and then tugged at Julian’s sleeve until she had his undivided attention. 

“Mom’s picture,” she said, urgently. 

“What about it, sweetheart?”

She pointed to the flower, and Julian nodded.

“Taya Elim doesn’t  _ have to  _ give you his  _ Teekza _ flower, sweetheart. Just because he’s sent bouquets in the past…”

Rali shook her head and then looked at the tray of thorns. 

“Grows,” she said. “Tobin tried to have one. It needs to be in the picture!”

“I don’t want you touching these,” Julian said firmly. 

He picked up the tray, then took the tweezers out of the cleaning basin for good measure, and used them to pick up one of the thorns for his own inspection. 

“You want this inside your picture?” he asked, holding it just low enough for her to see, not to touch. “It’s  _ sharp. _ It would damage the protective coating.”

She shook her head again, but he did not understand what she wanted. The thorn was small and jagged, certainly interesting to look at, perhaps she saw it as a particular letter or sound… 

“Forgive me if I was unclear during my dissection,” Elim leaned in to interject, “but I was unaware I had an audience. These are not  _ seeds _ , Rali. Nothing becomes of them except cuts and scratches, see?”

He reminded her of the bandages she had just applied to his fingers, and she seemed at least partially consoled. Then something clicked together in Julian’s mind, more quickly than he himself could verbalize, and he helped Rali dress in her coat so they could go and see the symbionts. 

Often, when she was  _ completely  _ unintelligible to Julian, she was thinking in more symbiotic terms, referencing past hosts and some of Dax’s personal memories in a way Julian had no hope of connecting with. He took her to the pools, hoping they would help soothe her in a way he could not - help clarify her thoughts and place them in more accessible terms. 

That, and it would allow him to check the progress of the singling, to see if maybe--

Rali broke her hand free of his, racing down the steps and finally coming to a skidding stop beside the mouth of the pool, leaving Julian to choose between lecturing her or merely catching up to make sure she was alright. 

He crouched beside her and opened his mouth to speak, but what he saw changed the sound into a gasp, instead. 

There, between Dax and Kahn, was the singling, tiny but properly formed. Its parents swam in quick, protective circles around it, but Dax calmed upon sensing Julian and Rali’s presence, and broke the pattern so they could see clearly. 

“I thought you’d take  _ ages _ ,” Julian teased, dipping two fingers into the water, swirling the tips just beneath the surface.

Dax swam forward to meet him, opening its mouth and letting its vomeronasal ganglia slip out just enough to touch his fingertip. Julian felt as though he was being greeted with a ‘kiss’ from an excitable dog, and he tapped Dax’s head gently in return. 

“I guess I helped a  _ bit _ . But well done, you two, she’s amazing,” Julian said, connecting back to the first time he had seen Rali, and mumbled the words in awe to himself while Ezri slept. 

“Is ‘she’ the baby?” Rali asked, tugging again at Julian’s sleeve. 

He withdrew his fingers from the water, and did not know precisely how to explain. 

“Yes,” he said. 

“She’s noisy,” Rali decided, “but I don’t mind. I heard it from in the house.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“And she was telling you about Tobin?” Julian went on, hoping Rali would not mind, later, if they needed to refer to the singling in a different way.

“No. She doesn’t know any real words yet.”

“Oh, I see. But she made enough noise to get us down here, didn’t she?”

“A lot.”

“Well, we’ll be sure to tell Mum about that, won’t we?”

Being entrusted with news to share was one of Rali’s greatest pleasures, and she was content to go home and sit near the front door with all these words jumbling around in her mind, working themselves around for hours until they were ready to come out in the right order. Julian felt almost the same, this time, and rustled through the blankets on his lounge chair, trying to make everything look presentable before Ezri arrived home. She might want something to eat, or simply to sit down and relax and catch up with her partner, or she might want to rush straight to the pool to see for herself how the symbionts were getting along.

She selected the last option, when she finally got home late at night. Rali had been permitted to stay up and see her, to share the news she was entrusted with, and as soon as Ezri’s bag was off her shoulder, she was carrying Rali out the door and smiling and chatting as if she had not missed a day. 

“Where are your passengers?” Julian called out from a few paces behind her, taking care to aim his handheld light so its beam covered Ezri’s path. 

“Oh, I stopped by the Institute to drop them off. They’re staying at the guesthouse there. We don’t have the room.”

“Well… Elim and I can be out of the way in no time, if you prefer th--”

“I’m not throwing you out. They’re kind of used to having their own space, by now, but they want to arrange some presentations and I told them I’d help with that. Don’t worry. And it’s not like I need more swarms at  _ our house _ \- I just got through with the new patients my  _ last _ speech encouraged - and especially with a baby to look after!”

The symbionts preferred the darkness, so Julian switched off his beacon when they reached the floor of the cave. Gradually, their glowing became more and more visible, and Rali sat down so she could make sense of all the competing patterns. Some flashed light quickly through different patches of their spots, and others made the slightest adjustments to their brightness, and Rali could understand all of it, if she was given the time and space to sort through it. Putting it into words was another, more complicated matter, and one Julian and Ezri always tried to take into gentle consideration. 

When the two of them took their own places, kneeling carefully at the edge of the water, Ezri felt a strange blend of memories from their time together. Some of their first dates, some of the baths Julian engineered to make her pregnancy more comfortable, and not-quite-unpleasant ghost sensations of where Dax used to reside, expressing all these feelings for itself. She knew the strength and blurring of these thoughts was due in part to Dax being so close to her, swaying the telepathic connection they had established during their Joining. But she learned to hold out her right hand and flex her fingers in a particular exercise Julian taught her, to reassert herself and her own mental dexterity. 

Then she thought about Rali, who had no control yet over this symbiotic connection. She was Ezri’s child just as much as she was Dax’s, and Julian’s.

She leaned in close against Julian’s shoulder. 

“You know,” she said, “if that vision I had with Sisko is anything to go on… this is the symbiont Rali is going to Join with.”

“I think that’s  _ certainly  _ something to go on,” Julian said kindly. 

“I mean… they had a whole  _ litter  _ of babies, in that, but… I don’t know… I think this is probably the only one they’ll ever have, and The Prophets just got their timelines confused, or something.”

“Sure. I know Lenara and Kahn want to Rejoin, for starters…”

“Oh! That would be good for them, yeah. But that means this is the only one. This is it,  _ this _ creature right here is going to Join with our daughter.”

“Yes,” Julian said. 

Ezri pointed to the singling with a steady finger, but a certain tremor in her voice. Julian had to turn and face her to work out exactly what was wrong. 

“I’m not ready for that,” she said, for his benefit. “It’s probably twenty years away, but I’m  _ not ready _ .”

“I understand,” Julian said, in the same soft tone. “But she doesn’t need to worry about rushing into Joining like you did, or worry about getting a bad match. Of course you don’t feel ready yet - that’s what those twenty years are  _ for _ . You take those twenty years to establish a dialogue with  _ this creature right here _ , to make sure it’s on the same page as our daughter is. Hell, it only took you a couple of years to restructure your planet’s most defining cultural practice, and  _ every  _ decision you’ve made will only benefit future Initiates, like Rali…”

Upon hearing her proper name, Rali propped herself up into a standing position, then stepped clumsily over Julian’s knees to give herself a front row seat at the singling’s poolside. When she lowered herself down again, she was leaning against one of Julian’s legs and one of Ezri’s, and the two of them scooted closer together in an unspoken agreement to make the position less uncomfortable. After a few moments, Ezri put her arm around Rali’s middle, and moved Rali over to sit fully on her lap. Assuming Rali was seeking input from both of them, Julian gently touched the back of her head, tracing his fingers through her short, fine hair. 

“Besides,” Julian added, “I think a symbiont is  _ exactly  _ the catalyst Rali needs to speak with more confidence.”

Ezri shrugged, then giggled and pressed her temple close to Rali’s. 

“You like talking to them, don’t you, sweetie?”

“She  _ loves  _ it,” Julian answered on her behalf. “It fits perfectly into our original theory, all the way back to Reassociative Trauma… when she seems overwhelmed - at least as long as I’ve been staying here - I bring her down to see the symbionts, and something about their communication process helps her get her thoughts in order. They speak the same primary language, even if it isn’t one you and I can  _ hear _ , per se…”

“Oh, I know,” Ezri said. “Even when she was younger… right after Dax and I Disjoined, she only wanted Lenara to hold her, so she could feel Kahn close by. And even with our eosin printing, I  _ know  _ I’m not getting every part of the interaction she is. I mean, is it just symbiotic telepathy? Like the interference I get from Dax when it’s nearby? And how it gets stronger when we make physical contact?”

Julian chuckled, curved his hand around to tickle beneath Rali’s chin, and then withdrew it entirely. Then he folded both hands in his lap in an attempt to look thoughtful and polite. 

“I’ve been making a point to  _ avoid  _ studying it formally,” Julian declared. “It’s funny… when you and I first started talking again, I, er… I was worried you were able to hear  _ my  _ thoughts, without any practice or prompting.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“No, of course not. I was young and in love and proportionately paranoid - so I thought - for the task of courting a  _ remarkable _ Joined Trill, such as yourself.”

“Uh huh.”

“But… yes. There’s an indefinable telepathic quality to it. Why would Rali bother with speaking, if she assumes all of us are getting the same input from the symbionts?”

“Oh, she isn’t saying anything now,” Rali piped up, and waved one hand out to indicate the singling. 

“She?” said Ezri, hanging her mouth into a curious pout.

“I slipped and started calling the singling ‘she,’” Julian explained. “I guess it stuck… of course I haven’t had the chance to ask, yet, how she would prefer to be addressed. But I intend to ask both her and Rali, later on…”

“Hmm,” Ezri sounded thoughtful. 

“Hmm?” Julian tipped the same sound on its side. 

“This is the first baby symbiont in... I don’t know how many years. A hundred? And we’ve developed at least a basic communication system we could use to interact with it, and… I mean, if I want to start interviewing it to see how it would feel about Joining, something it has no previous experience with… yes…”

Julian waited for a moment after she had trailed off, to be sure he was not interrupting. He saw no problem with helping her pick the thought back up, though. 

“Yes?” he prompted.

“I’m going to make First Contact with the Symbiont Race,” Ezri said, eyes wide and focused beneath the water. “That’s something the Federation never bothered to do, because they kind of thought we were all on the same page, already. Hearing the same things, voicing the same wants and needs… But it hasn’t been done, and it needs to be.”

“You  _ are _ remarkable,” Julian said quietly.

Ezri tried to lighten the moment, herself, rubbing Rali’s side and making her laugh, then making a similar gesture toward the singling as it floated. 

“Oh, it’s just something I need to do for our  _ daughters _ , anyway,” Ezri said. 

“Like I said,” Julian smiled, and touched his forehead to hers in a gesture typical of Cardassian affection, “ _ remarkable.”  _

***

“You can’t expect it to happen overnight,” Julian said, trying to cram his parka into one of the two suitcases he brought along. 

Elim tutted his tongue, catching the split ends of it on his lip and looking at Julian with mock dismay. Then he intervened, taking the jacket and straightening out the creases, and going to hang it in the closet by the front door. Neither of them would need heavy jackets on Cardassia; it would only make sense to leave it there for their next visit. Julian expressed his thanks quietly, with a nod and a momentary touch to Elim’s hand as he strode past.

“I don’t,” Ezri replied to the original observation. “But they  _ do  _ mature quickly, once they’re on their own. Dax was only a few years old when it Joined for the first time.” 

Two more weeks had passed since the singling’s separation from the clutch, and Ezri was anxiously awaiting the day she could establish contact with it for the first time. In the interim, she had informed Starfleet of her intentions, and she was provided with a packet to refresh her memory on first contact protocol, a good deal of field research to complete as the events transpired, and even a yeoman who remained stationed at the Commission headquarters to help keep Ezri organized while she worked. 

“She has a lot of information to take in,” Julian reasoned. “Both her parents have been Joined for centuries, to a total of - what, fifteen? - fifteen different hosts! No one learns a language instantly, let alone all the different context involved in references to fifteen unique lifetimes.”

“Even a language  _ known _ for its ability to be instantly perceived,” Ezri said, with a defeated chuckle. 

“I wouldn’t say much is known  _ about _ it, beyond that,” Julian teased. “You and I are some of the most prominent scholars in the field, and you’re about to do something completely unprecedented. I couldn’t even guess how the singling takes in information, or what information her parents choose to share, or if it understands to separate them as past events and future desires… Maybe one day we can ask Rali, but that’s as close a connection as I’ve been able to give you, I’m afraid.”

From the mess of blankets on his borrowed lounge chair, he dug out his pajamas and made an attempt at folding them, before sliding them into his suitcase. 

“Do you think the dye prints will be enough?” Ezri asked. “Should I establish physical contact, too? And what if Rali gets more information from it than I do, and then she can’t tell me what she heard?”

Julian paused and stepped away from his packing, and gently took hold of Ezri’s shoulders, looking down into her eyes with warmth and sincerity. 

“I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “It’s  _ symbiosis _ . When it’s happening, you’ll know.  _ You’ll just know _ .”

He squeezed her shoulders, patted them, dusted them off in a way he hoped befitted a Starfleet Captain, then placed his hands at his sides and took an apologetic step backward. Elim could pick up on the somber tone of the room, of two friends reluctant to part ways, and he came to stand between them, leaning more toward Julian than Ezri. 

“Our good doctor has students relying on him,” Elim said. “Unfortunately we will have to miss what will no doubt be a  _ monumental _ occasion.”

“ _ And _ ,” Julian added, “I don’t want my name interfering with your work. You should get the recognition you deserve.”

“You should too,” Ezri said. “But I understand.  _ Thank you _ .”

“But keep us posted,” Julian said, smiling again. 

“Oh, I will. Definitely.”

“Captain,” Elim said, reaching to hold her wrist in a Cardassian demonstration of respect, “Even if nothing comes of this Federation arrangement, I want to congratulate you on your achievements. It has been a great joy to watch your planet begin to follow your example, and to see a new generation emerge who will know - truly - how to  _ listen  _ to one another.”

Julian’s smile brightened, and his eyes moved magnetically to Elim. He had taken a similar joy in watching Elim’s progress over the years, as they grew closer together. 

“That’s sweet of you, dear,” Julian observed. 

“I am merely aspiring to reflect the honesty and compassion I have learned from our friend, here,” he replied, nodding once to Ezri. “Now, Captain, if you’ll excuse us. We would hate to distract you from the task at hand. Thank you, as always, for your hospitality, and do pass on my compliments to your charming partner, as well. She has a wonderful eye for design, and I greatly enjoyed the talks she and I shared.”

“Thanks, Garak. I’ll pass that on.”

“You know we’ll be back,” Julian said, failing to resist the urge to brush her cheek as he walked by. “For Rali’s Joining, if nothing else. That’s a procedure I can hardly  _ wait  _ to perform.”

Ezri looked down at his knuckles and laughed. 

“Yeah, you’ve got about twenty years to get ready.”

“Absolutely. It’s already on my calendar.”

***

Ezri continued taking trips to the Caves of Mak’ala, grateful Lenara’s home was situated close to the capital. Sometimes Lenara would accompany her, other times she would accept the insistent help of her yeoman, and - on her favorite occasions - she and Rali would make the trip alone. Rali would sit and unpack her painting kit with the same methodical urgency Ezri used when unpacking her communications array. Then they would both sit and peer into the milky white water, waiting to see recognizable lights creep to the surface. Rali made impressions of these with her paper, eagerly looking over her shoulder and watching as Ezri did the same with her more advanced dyeing technique. 

Ezri favored Rali’s assistance because - as Julian pointed out - when symbiotic communication was occurring, Rali  _ just knew _ . Her skills as an interpreter were still lacking compared to the practical needs of the mission, but with gentle guidance and leading questions from Ezri, she was starting to find her voice. It was easiest when the pool was relatively dark and ‘quiet,’ allowing her to focus on fewer thoughts at a time. 

During one visit, the water was almost entirely still, and the glow that radiated upward was difficult to distinguish from the whiteness of the surface. It was dim and pale, as if untrained…

The singling’s form of expression was as soft as Rali’s, but rather than emerging in stutters and thoughtful reflection before choosing only a few words, the singling loaned weak light to its spots, learning the patterns as it lit them. Ezri squinted down at it, then checked to see what symbols appeared on her dye print. The singling was still learning practical language - shaping the concepts it inherently knew into phrases others could understand - and the first letters it conveyed were abstract, difficult to pronounce. 

Holding Ezri’s arm for support, Rali leaned over the poolside, interpreting the spots through the cloudy water. 

“Her name!” Rali said. 

That made sense to Ezri, learning a name before more advanced phrases. It was exactly like Rali learning to greet Mom and Dad - understanding those terms as the people and acts that accompanied them - without needing any other words to get her message across. 

She dipped a sensor probe into the water and began to watch the letters appear on her dye pad. The other inhabitants of the pool were quiet and respectful, letting the new member introduce herself. 

Rali read the print with the same skill and enthusiasm as she read the glowing spots themselves. 

“Miele-aht-ter’ova-shil-vasa-ey’zh--”

“Miele,” Ezri observed, repeating the widest shapes from the top of the print. “That’s lovely.”

These letters were thickest because they appeared at the center of its head, where they could be read from one side and all the way around to the other. Many symbionts were named from this point, where syllables were shortest and easiest to read. Even the old Caretakers of the pools were not as fluent in the language as Ezri and her followers became, leaving symbionts with memorable ‘nicknames’ in place of their full phonetic titles. 

When the print was filled - reading from the singling’s head to tail and back up to its head again - Ezri carefully removed the probe and replaced it with her fingers. She waited patiently, swirling them in the water to get the symbionts’ attention. Then she felt Dax come up to acknowledge her, nuzzling with its vomeronasal feelers, giving a playful swish with its tail as it turned to leave. The water was still again for a moment, and she imagined Dax conveying similar assurances to its young as she turned to Rali. 

“Sit here, Sweetie,” Ezri said, lowering Rali to the ground and encouraging her to cross her legs so her feet would not touch the water. 

Rali drew her knees up to her chin, then tightened her arms around them to help her stay in place. She was prone to moving more when she was nervous - Julian taught her some strategies to cope with this, but he often did not mind any excited movement of her hands. Ezri could usually accommodate her too, and touched her arm to help her loosen the grip. 

“It’s okay,” Ezri said, “I just don’t want you to fall in the water. But if you’re careful… here, feel with your finger, see if it’s too hot…”

She guided Rali’s fingers into a clumsy fist, then helped her loosen them again, so she could place her index finger down into the water.

“Oh!” Rali shrieked with delight.

“Is it too hot?”

“It’s good!” Rali said. 

Then she pried her other hand free from beneath her knee and used it to point, reinforcing the same meaning and hoping Ezri would understand. 

“She’s in there! Miele!” Rali gasped and then covered her mouth. “She touched my hand!”

Ezri saw and could not express everything she felt, because it was conveyed  _ symbiotically _ . She saw two sisters, she saw two daughters, she saw friends and lifetimes of protection and love. She saw two incredible entities, communicating and caring for each other as hosts and symbionts had not done in centuries, and then she saw one entity who felt confident and fully realized. 

She saw Rali Miele. 

***

Once the singling knew her language, the last remaining barrier for Ezri to cross was arranging the First Contact proceedings. It was important to her that neither Dax nor Kahn influence their child, unduly swaying it toward accepting the amenities the Federation was able to offer. Ezri had tried several times to speak back to Miele with her dye pad working in reverse, allowing her to carefully select letters and concepts to be pulsed through the water, but the response from the entire cluster of gathered symbionts was too distracting. Even when they were not all actively speaking, Ezri’s machine picked up faint interference from any thoughts they were exchanging strongly enough amongst themselves - especially when multiple individuals had the same idea about a particular subject - and Ezri wondered if this was the state Rali existed in, constantly. Hearing overlapping voices and feeling competing emotions, and then struggling to give a comprehensible response on command... 

Ezri felt for her, and knew the key to interacting with Rali was peace and quiet, and solitude when it was available, and access to an array of nonverbal communication methods. Inspired, she applied the same technique to Miele, by kindly requesting the other symbionts agree to evacuate the pool for a few days so she could talk to  _ her _ , alone. 

Lenara came to help her with moving all of them, shifting some into other tidepools and collecting a few in communal tanks. There was competing evidence about whether climate controlled tanks or open community ponds were better for recuperation, so Ezri allowed the symbionts to make the decision for themselves. Then she would adjust her instruments and dip the sensor probe into the water, and wait for Miele to speak. After a few days of receiving silence and then a string of words she could not interpret, Ezri removed the probe from the water and sent a communique Julian’s way, instead. 

He answered her questions over an hour later, but she was still alone in the cave with Miele, sitting contorted in a dancer’s warm-up pose and sighing. She did not feel hopeless - all of her hard work had gotten her this far, and  _ so close  _ to the resolution - but it kept slipping through her fingers, and she was frustrated. 

“I think you might be right,” Julian said in his message, “you might need to establish contact physically. I wish I could tell you anything from when Dax Joined with me, temporarily, but it seems Dax is prone to taking its memories with it, afterward, as you can attest to. When we Joined for your procedure it was… I mean, I didn’t need its help to finish the surgery - I’ve more experience with that than anyone  _ should _ \- but I got the sense it… it wanted to watch over you. The feeling was much stronger at the time… I don’t  _ usually  _ kiss my patients when they wake up, you know.”

She chuckled in time with the recording, then cast a wistful gaze down at the pool. Miele did not move as often when she was alone, it turned out, and Ezri felt bad for separating her from her community, perhaps before she was ready…

Right away, she tapped her communicator badge and called for the aid of her assistant - Yeoman sh’Elka - who was dispatched from the Commission headquarters. If there was any chance of Ezri forgetting the results of a physical Joining, she would need a trained witness. 

Yeoman sh’Elka was proficient in her field, and - as a  _ shen  _ Andorian - delighted to be assigned to such a critical mission on a planet with an ‘agreeable’ climate. She had served only as a Yeoman for more than a decade, and the skills she had developed in this time made a perfect complement to her interest in symbiotic reproduction as a possible case study for her own people to learn from. She responded immediately to Ezri’s call, and arrived in time to find Ezri coaxing symbionts gently from their tanks and back into the pool where Miele lived. 

“I need to make physical contact with the singling,” Ezri explained, rolling up her sleeves as she set aside the last now-empty tank. “Just… if you could record everything I say, and then we can work out whether it was my voice or Miele-- um, the singling’s - afterward. Thank you.”

Yeoman sh’Elka nodded attentively and removed a critically important padd and data chip from her kit; the chip contained the accepted script for First Contact, and the padd screen was capable of displaying it in thousands of different languages, as it listened in real-time and adjusted to its surroundings. It could be modified to speak aloud for interactions with blind races, and Ezri requested this feature be engaged and coupled with her eosin translation pad. 

And then, with only a quiet ‘are you sure, Captain?’ from sh’Elka, Ezri waded into the pool with her arms tense, but peacefully extended. 

It overwhelmed all of her senses, this time. Instead of just  _ hearing  _ the competing thoughts of the whole group of excitable symbionts, she could feel their motivations in a way that was almost physical. Little pangs of guilt and excitement echoed through her stomach, ringing up to the nerve Dax used to occupy. The mechanical symbiont suddenly felt cold inside her, as the real Dax swam past and gave her a friendly touch with its tail. 

“Hi, Dax, I see you,” she said softly. “I’m gonna need you to move away for a minute… everyone except the Miele symbiont, please… I know you’re here for moral support, and that’s great, but…”

She only realized she reached the deepest point of the pool after inhaling a mouthful of the protein-rich water, then coughing and wiping her mouth with the drenched sleeve of her uniform, which did not help the situation much. Over her shoulder, she could hear the padd reading out the opening statements, transforming the polite introduction she had heard hundreds of times in Standard into a series of native chirps and chittering sounds. It made her smile, and then this made her choke on the water again. The symbionts were all delighted to see her, which caused the very delayed realization that she should take a few steps backward, where she could stand more comfortably with her chin just brushing the water’s surface. 

Kahn swam off in a hurried panic, jostling over Ezri’s arm and leaving behind dozens of impressions of its memories, half-formed and only partially visible to Ezri. She felt these more clearly in her stomach, too, as nervousness and devotion and pride. 

“I think she’s amazing,” Ezri agreed with the culmination of these unvoiced impressions, all surrounding Miele and Lenara and even Jadzia, and Torias and Nilani. All the same, but different. 

The thoughts she was experiencing seemed to become more distant, as the symbionts followed her instructions and gathered around the perimeter of the pool. She felt like she was experiencing their input through the lens of a dream, observing but not participating, but it still took a great deal of focus for her to listen only for Miele’s voice. Using what advice she had given dozens of patients on dealing with intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors, she consciously swept the symbionts’ combined voices aside, and kept her arms still and steady for Miele to attach to, if she chose. 

“I represent the United Federation of Planets,” Ezri recited calmly, following along with the script as it was read by the computerized voice of the padd. It was important to her to say these words  _ herself _ . “We would be interested in learning about your culture, and we are prepared to offer you aid and protection if you wish to, um,  _ join  _ with us.”

She neither heard nor saw Miele’s reply, but she experienced sensations of light and thought, and it was almost the same. 

“We have no desire to harm you,” Ezri went on, staring down into the cloudy water in search of the singling, “but we want to know if you… want to be with us. I  _ need  _ to know.”

Miele drifted upward, enough to touch the underside of Ezri’s forearm, and Ezri resisted the urge to jolt backward at the sudden overload she experienced. She thought of Rali and her usual coping techniques, and she took in a deep breath to steady herself again. 

“I wish to speak,” Miele said, through its contact with Ezri. 

Off to the side, sh’Elka crouched on the shoreline and took attentive notes, repressing her fascination with the symbionts, forbidding herself the option of putting her hand in the water and effectively undoing all of Ezri’s progress. 

“Please do,” Ezri said. “This is our preferred method of communication; it is difficult for us to read all of your thoughts and memories.”

“You were a host,” Miele observed, again through Ezri’s voice. “You allowed the speech of my elder.”

“Dax? I did, yes. But I want to know  _ your  _ desires, separate from your elders’. Can you separate them for me?”

“I wish to speak,” Miele said again. “When I experience these things for myself, I will  _ speak  _ them.”

“I don’t think we’re using that term in the same way,” Ezri said patiently. “But go ahead… speak.”

“When they occur, they are spoken. They are spoken once, and then only remembered. I am speaking now?”

Ezri did not want her questions weighted too heavily toward allying with the Federation, but real interactions sometimes called for the delegates to improvise. 

“When you say ‘speak,’ do you mean ‘join?’” she asked. “You are Joined with me now… that’s what my ancestors first called it, when you share your experience with a creature like me.”

“Ezri, Miele,” Miele said slowly. “In that way, we are.”

“We are  _ now _ ,” Ezri said. “Is this how you prefer to communicate? Would you choose to stay in this arrangement, given the choice?”

“Choice…”

“Yes. You can choose to join, or not to. The humanoids - creatures like me - we chose to become one with the Federation, but our voices are not meant to override yours.”

“Elder Aul spoke this,” Miele said, in reference to another symbiont in the pool. “Aul was involved in this Federation creature the very first time. Elder Dax, many times had an… involvement”

“Yes, a lot of symbionts like you have been involved with the Federation. But that doesn’t mean  _ you have to be _ . If you could make the decision alone, what would you choose? You are the first new symbiont in a long time, Miele… I want to know how  _ you  _ feel, what  _ you  _ would choose, alone.”

“To speak. How can I speak, alone?”

“You would choose to Join with a humanoid, so you could ‘speak’ these new experiences?” Ezri said gently. 

“I am to.”

“And you would leave the humanoid to decide its affiliation. Would you want the host to protect you from danger?”

“All of our Elders have seen danger.”

Ezri caught herself trudging forward again, through the silt. She stumbled then steadied herself and moved backward, careful not to draw Miele out of the conducive water; she worried contact with the air would render her progress lost. 

“They have,” Ezri was solemn. “All of them have.”

“That is something to speak of. That is a way of living. Together.”

“Together,” Ezri echoed, her voice starkly different from the one Miele had been borrowing. “We are… communal creatures. We exist in harmony with each other; that sounds like something you want as much as a humanoid would, to Join.”

“I want.”

Barely, Ezri managed to contain her own thoughts and experiences, as the rich water made them much more prone to transference. She thought of Bajor’s Prophets, of their adverse reactions to linear time, of how they walked beside their people through Occupation and War and adversity. She thought of how wounded Julian felt, when his friends all abandoned him at once. She thought fondly of the Federation, and how it welcomed her when her own family would not, and how it allowed her to take a vested interest in improving the emotional wellbeing of the traumatized, lonely officers all around her. 

“Together,” she said, in a shaking voice Miele influenced, “is very good.”

It was as if the two of them spoke the words together, in two voices, through one overworked consciousness. When Ezri succumbed to her exhaustion, her head splashed softly into the water, and the cluster of symbionts banded together underneath her body, keeping her safely afloat on the surface until she awoke again. 

She rolled her head over, and her cheek touched the cold, scratchy gravel. Dax was the last to leave her side, and she caught a glimpse of its tail waving and glowing as it returned to deeper water. 

“Did you get it?” Ezri asked, staring vacantly forward.

Despite all of sh’Elka’s training and practice, she was nearly speechless. But she knew that many humanoids nodded their affirmations, so she looked Ezri directly in the eye before doing so. 

“Good,” Ezri said. 

***

“Now  _ that  _ must’ve made quite the picture!” Julian chirped and laughed into the speaker, standing close enough to his camera to distort the sound. “You in your  _ dress uniform _ , sopping wet, mud on your face, residue from the symbionts all over you, even when Admiral Pilar showed up to shake your hand!”

“Yeah I was… a mess,” Ezri said, laughing along with him. “But it was amazing. I’m so glad I got to do it.”

“I’m glad  _ for  _ you. When’s the ceremony?”

“Next week. I’m just putting in my final requests for the official program.”

“And you’re sure you won’t mind if I don’t make it? This was  _ all you _ ; I wouldn’t want to be in the way.”

“I know, and that’s sweet of you. I’ll let Dax give that speech on family, then. Don’t worry.”

“Hmm,” he sighed contently. “I’ll look forward to the video recording. Oh, and Ezri…?”

She had paused with her hand near the communicator button, ready to say her goodbyes.

“Hmm?” she said back. 

“I am _ so _ incredibly proud of you.  _ Just you _ . Everything you’ve become since we first met, it’s astonishing. You’re a whole new person… I’ve known you -  _ just you  _ \- for more lifetimes than I can count. You’ve done  _ everything _ .”

She could see his perspective and count the roles for herself: friend, lover, and then research partner to Julian, mother to Rali, counselor to Dax, and then the cycle repeated with Lenara and Miele.

“It’s never been  _ just me _ ,” she spoke in a softer voice, so he would not take offence at her disagreement. “But thank you, Julian. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, too. All of us.”

***

The following week, Ezri arrived with her dress uniform starched and cleaned and in much better shape than it had been when first contact was established. With special permission from the symbionts, the Federation party was hosted in the caves, allowing curious delegates the chance to interact with the newly-admitted race up close. Ezri was well-practiced at giving speeches, by now, and requested her time at the podium be limited to only a few minutes, in favor of mingling with the crowd of Trill - both symbionts and humanoids - to understand their feelings about the proceedings. Many humanoids were learning to see the Federation in a new light, a virtually endless well of resources existing in stark contrast to the Old Commission, where competition led to greed and hastily-covered criminal activity. 

As intended, Dax gave a brief reading about family - based on Julian’s private research logs, but never mentioning him by name. When this was finished, it had a string of compliments to give Ezri in front of the whole delegation, about her drive and compassion and her pursuit of equality in a way Dax had never known. 

Ezri felt somewhat silly turning to read from its dye pad, acting as the interpreter even when its words of praise were directed at her, as a separate entity. 

“When I was first chosen for Joining,” she said, as Dax formed the thoughts with eosin, “I was a very young symbiont. I was reckless and wayward, and I was snapped up to Join before I was ready - there were so many Hosts looking to Join, and so few of us successfully achieving Singling. I will never fear that mistreatment again, with the Host Ezri watching over our legislation, and the Federation also. I learned as I went through lifetimes, and I was never lonely, and I fought for better treatment through two of my hosts who were involved with the Commission, but now my war is over, and all of us live in peace. I have eternity to express my gratitude to the Host Ezri and all of my hosts, and that is all I shall pursue.  _ Thank you _ .”

Ezri cleared her throat and said ‘you’re welcome, Dax,’ but that only sparked the symbiont up again, and Ezri had to speak quickly to keep up. 

“I mean it sincerely,” Dax printed and Ezri read on its behalf, “you taught me of sadness, and you gave me the freedom to take what I learned and process it alone, without passing on the effects to you as my Host. You showed me my past families, you made for me a new one, you encouraged me to form my own. I had never known sadness, in my youth, but I was worse without it. When something happened to a host, I would wake up again elsewhere, and be expected to begin again without acknowledgement. Host Ezri gave acknowledgement to me, was patient with me, and showed me - without fear of punishment - that the love of my families still endured… I thank them, again and again.” 

In addition to Dax, the official program included words from Verring Dei and Greda Lase. The couple spoke in closely interwoven voices, finishing each other’s thoughts and keeping the focus on what Ezri had done for them. In the brief time they had spent back on Trill, they gave a series of well-attended lectures on the depth of their connection. Where Ezri had originally aimed to separate  _ everyone’s  _ unique voices, Verring and Greda provided inspiration on rebuilding and restructuring communal voices for mutual benefit. Those who could not understand Ezri’s advice could easily follow that of the legendary couple, especially as Ezri personally exonerated them from exile. Their story provided the balance Ezri needed, as it was accessible to those who did not know what to do now that they were Disjoined. These individuals felt inspired to Reassociate and to draw from their pasts. Verring and Greda expressed their gratitude to Ezri for this, too. 

As the predetermined speeches came to an end, Ezri stepped away from the pool. Her services as a translator were no longer needed, and she skimmed her way through the crowd to find Lenara and Rali, hoping to spend the rest of the celebration with them. The crowd yielded much like the commune of symbionts, making collective steps backward and out of Ezri’s way as she approached, but even with this polite accommodation, she struggled to find her family members. She wondered if Rali needed a break from all the excitement; perhaps Lenara had taken her outside. But the symbionts were best at calming Rali down, so Ezri decided to search the rest of the poolsides, first. She ducked through a few more attendees to continue her search, and then her attention was called forward again. 

Lenara was standing at the podium, speaking into the amplifier. Rali was holding one of her hands and standing behind her, turned to face Dax’s familial pond instead of the audience. 

“It is my greatest privilege,” Lenara was saying, “to invite Counselor Tigan back to the stage. While Ezri and I have only known each other briefly, she has shared with me the bond of  _ soulmates _ , across multiple incarnations. She has given the same selfless attention to me as she has to many of you; she has helped me become comfortable with who I am. Ezri…?”

Ezri realized just how slowly she was walking, even though the crowds had parted to form a wide aisle to the podium. Everyone seemed to be staring at her as she walked past. Some mumbled quiet words of encouragement, others of gratitude, and so she sped her pace. 

“Thank you…” Ezri said, crowding beside Lenara, barely in the microphone’s range. She cleared her throat and knelt to collect Rali in her arms, before giving Lenara a patient, questioning look. 

From one side of the aisleway, she noticed a man in an admiral’s uniform moving toward her. His steps were quick and determined, and she felt a brief flash of fear, as if she was in trouble, as if all of her research was about to be denounced as it had been years ago, under Julian’s name. But there was no harshness in the admiral’s advances, and he stopped a few paces behind the podium to open his suitcase, covered with Federation decals and several layers of locking devices. Ezri was about to ask what was inside, but then she heard it click open, and the heavy cuff of the man’s uniform obscured her view of its contents…

“For these acts of selfless bravery,” the admiral began, “and for the admittance of a new race to our membership charter, I hereby declare your Captaincy no longer provisional, but permanent.”

From the case, he removed three traditional golden pips - until now, Ezri’s provisional rank had been denoted with silver ones, in addition to her rightfully-earned lieutenant’s rank in gold, and gold-rimmed black. She found herself standing up taller on her toes, leaning forward so he could reach her collar with ease, swapping the two silver pips and the one hollow black one for three new gold ones, now officially hers. He pressed them into her diplomatic uniform with great care, even polishing them with a tiny brush when they were all in line. Then he stepped back to admire his work, and Ezri could just catch Lenara’s gaze over his shoulder. There was a spark of excitement in her eye, which Ezri could not help but mirror. 

“Captain Tigan,” Lenara said, smiling brightly, “would do me the honor - as your first official act as Captain - of making me your wife?”

“Yes…  _ yes _ ,” Ezri said, nodding enthusiastically, “yes! Of course I will.”

The admiral graciously conducted the ceremony - Ezri had the feeling Lenara had arranged this component with him beforehand - and when she set Rali down to embrace Lenara, Rali went rushing off out of sight. Ezri was ready to interrupt her own vows in favor of calling out Rali’s name, but before she could do this, Rali scrambled back into view with her arms full of flower stems. 

It seemed everyone was in on the plan, Ezri thought happily, as she watched Rali hand out a flower to everyone in the front row who wanted one. She recognized the stems as native  _ Teekza _ , while the blooms were sparse, fragile, and undeniably Cardassian in origin. 

“Mister Garak and I  _ might’ve _ had our ulterior motives, and a few long talks while you and Julian were away...” Lenara spoke with her cheek brushing Ezri’s, on the way to kissing her to conclude the ceremony. 

“Well, you learned from the best,” Ezri replied. “Thank you, this is  _ perfect _ . Honestly, I couldn’t have imagined any better. Thank you.”

With the flowers all distributed, Rali came waddling forward again, stooping to put her fingers into Miele’s pool before letting Ezri scoop her up and carry her through the parted crowd, nuzzling her cheek all the way home. 


End file.
